sepulchre over his remains, and he will be
reckoned among the saints.

Members of a large and peculiar religious community of Hindus are
often to be met with in the Bombay Presidency. Their habit resembles
the ordinary dress worn by Hindus, but a good deal amplified, and dyed
a slate colour. It is a rather successful adaptation of everyday dress
to religious purposes. They travel generally in large companies and
stay a long time in one spot, where, as a rule, they form a camp of
temporary huts. But sometimes they take a house for a while. Small
detachments from the main body wander round the villages, lodging in
an empty house, or taking possession of the village rest-house. They
remain till the charity of the village is exhausted, and then they
move on.

They beg on a large scale. The "one _pice_," or farthing, which the
ordinary beggar asks for, does not at all represent their idea of
charity. They expect any fairly well-to-do person, such as a
shopkeeper, to give sufficient food for the whole community for one
day, and they sit in his house till they get it. They do not stand at
the door and salaam and cringe, like the ordinary mendicant. They
boldly enter in uninvited and demand alms. They are much disliked on
account of the largeness of their wants. But they are also feared on
account of the terrible nature of their denunciations if they do not
get what they ask for. They profess to be celibates, but a
peculiarity of their constitution is that the community consists of
both males and females, and they camp close to each other. The small
detachments who travel round the villages are also mixed companies.
There are a large number of children attached to the community, who
are brought up to follow the same life and wear the same
slate-coloured habit. So also do the women, who receive an education,
contrary to the custom so prevalent in India, and are said to spend a
good deal of their time teaching the children. Their explanation of
the presence of children in their midst is that they are orphans, or
that they have been given to them by parents in fulfilment of a vow.

One of the small sub-sections of the community took up their quarters
in the verandah of a shut-up house in Yerandawana. Passing through the
village one evening, I came upon them just as they were about to sit
down to their evening meal. I asked a rather pleasant-looking,
middle-aged woman whether the several children that I saw playing
about went t